Summary
Overview
This episode chronicles the Festival of the Supreme Being, orchestrated by Robespierre on June 8, 1794, as his attempt to establish a state religion based on virtue and surveillance. The festival, featuring elaborate pageantry with papier-mâché mountains and thousands of singers, represented Robespierre's happiest day and his vision for replacing Terror with divine oversight. However, the event deepened divisions among revolutionaries, particularly atheists and dechristianizers like Fouché and Thuriot, who saw Robespierre as priestly and reactionary. Following the festival's success, Robespierre introduced the Law of Prairielle, eliminating legal defenses and requiring only jurors' feelings for conviction, dramatically accelerating executions. This radicalization, combined with his denunciations of former allies like Fouché, began uniting his enemies against him as the month of Thermidor approached.
The Festival of the Supreme Being
On June 8, 1794, Robespierre staged the most spectacular public event of the French Revolution: the Festival of the Supreme Being. Featuring elaborate sets by painter Jacques-Louis David, including a 2,400-voice choir, cardboard statues, and pyrotechnic displays, the festival drew massive crowds to the Tuileries gardens and Champ de Mars. Despite nervous preparations, the event succeeded brilliantly, with citizens enjoying the pageantry of burning atheism in effigy to reveal wisdom, patriotic hymns, and Robespierre's speeches from atop a massive papier-mâché mountain. However, many deputies found the spectacle both ridiculous and sinister, particularly atheists who resented the theological turn.
- Robespierre delivered a speech on June 8, 1794, promoting virtue, constancy, and crushing tyranny at the Festival of the Supreme Being
- Jacques-Louis David designed the festival with 2,400 singers, elaborate sets, pyrotechnics, and girls in white dresses distributing flowers
- Robespierre wore his finest blue coat and tricolour sash but was so nervous he forgot his bouquet and couldn't eat breakfast
- The morning's highlight featured Robespierre torching a cardboard statue of atheism to reveal a slightly singed statue of wisdom
- The afternoon spectacle involved a massive papier-mâché mountain with a statue of Apollo, where all deputies climbed and Robespierre positioned himself at the summit
- Half a million people reportedly attended, though this was likely an exaggeration; the festival concluded with athletic contests modeled on ancient Greece
" Let us be grave and discreet in all our deliberations, as men who determine the interests of the world. Let us be ardent and tenacious in our anger towards the leagues of tyranny, imperturbable in danger, patient in labour, terrible in adversity, modest and vigilant in success. "
" Look at the bastard. It's not enough for him to be master. He must be god. "
The Theology of the Supreme Being
Robespierre's Supreme Being represented a deliberate attempt to create a revolutionary religion that would maintain moral order without traditional Christianity. He argued that belief in a watchful deity was essential for citizens to behave virtuously and support the revolution, calling atheism "aristocratic" since common people naturally believed in divine justice. This theology drew directly from the Declaration of Rights of Man, which had been promulgated "under the auspices of the supreme being," making the revolution's ideals appear divinely ordained rather than culturally relative. The Supreme Being functioned primarily as an "internalized surveillance mechanism"—a disembodied eye watching citizens' hearts to enforce virtue when the Committee of Public Safety could not.
- Robespierre publicly confronted atheist trends in November 1793, declaring that even if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him
- Robespierre argued that atheism is aristocratic and that common people need belief in a Supreme Being who watches over oppressed innocents and punishes crime
- The Declaration of Rights of Man from August 1789 claimed to be promulgated 'under the auspices of the supreme being,' giving Robespierre's theology constitutional legitimacy
- The Supreme Being was symbolized primarily as a disembodied all-seeing eye, described as an 'internalized surveillance mechanism' to enforce virtue
- Robespierre believed that without belief in divine justice in the afterlife, people would lose faith in earthly justice and relapse into cynicism and despair
" The idea of a great being who watches over oppressed innocents and punishes triumphant crime is one that entirely belongs to the people. "
" Whoever tries to stop the saying of mass is a worse fanatic than the priest who says it. "
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